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Reading Hegelthe introductions

G.W.F. HegelEdited by Aakash Singh and Rimina Mohapatra

READING HEGEL

re.press Melbourne 2008

G. W. F. Hegel

Edited and Introduced byAakash Singh and Rimina Mohapatra

READING HEGELthe introductions

re.press

PO Box 40, Prahran, 3181, Melbourne, Australiaahttp://www.re-press.org re.press 2008

This work is Open Access, published under a creative commons license which means that you are free to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work as long as you clearly attribute the work to the authors, that you do not use this work for any commercial gain in any form whatsoever and that you in no way alter, transform or build on the work outside of its use in normal academic scholarship without express permission of the author (or their executors) and the publisher of this volume. For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of this work. For more information see the details of the creative commons licence at this website: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/

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National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication DataAuthor: Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 1770-1831. Title: Reading Hegel : Hegels introductions / G. W. F. Hegel; editor Aakash Singh, Rimina Mohapatra.ISBN: 9780980544015 (pbk.) 9780980666588 (ebook)Notes: Includes index. Bibliography.Subjects: Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 1770-1831. Philosophy.Other Authors/Contributors: Singh, Aakash. Mohapatra, Rimina.

Dewey Number: 193

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CONTENTS

Th e Texts page vii

EDITORS INTRODUCTION 1Th e Circle of Knowledge - 3; Th e Concretion of Knowledge - 5; Th e Phenomenology of Spirit - 8; Th e Science of Logic - 8; Th e Philosophy of Right - 10; Th e Philosophy of History - 11; Th e Philosophy of Fine Art - 12; Th e Philosophy of Religion - 15; Th e History of Philosophy - 17; Closing the Circle - 17; References - 19

PHENOMENOLOGY OF SPIRIT 21Preface: On Scientifi c Knowledge - 23; Th e Element of Truth is the Concept/Notion (Begriff ), And its True Form, the Scientifi c System - 25; Present Position of the Spirit - 26; Th e Principle is not the Completion; Against Formalism - 28; Th e Absolute is Subject, and What this is - 29; Th e Element of Knowledge - 33; Th e Ascent into this is the Phenomenology of Spirit - 34; Th e Transformation of the Familiar into Th ought - 35; Transformation into the Concept - 37; In What Way the Phenomenology of the Spirit is Negative - 39; Historical and Mathematical Truth - 40; Th e Nature of Philosophical Truth and its Method - 42; Against Schematizing Formalism - 43; Th e Demands of the Study of Philosophy - 46; Argumentative Th inking in its Negative Attitude - 47; In its Positive Attitude; its Subject - 47

SCIENCE OF LOGIC 53Preface to the First Edition - 55; Preface to the Second Edition - 58; Introduction: General Concept of Logic - 67; General Classifi cation of Logic - 80

PHILOSOPHY OF RIGHT 85Preface - 87; Introduction - 89

PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 111Introduction - 113; Original History - 113; Refl ective History - 114; Philosophical History - 116; Reason Governs the World - 117; Essential Destiny of Reason - 120; Th e Course of the Worlds History - 142

PHILOSOPHY OF FINE ART 155Th e Limits of Aesthetics - 157; Aesthetics Confi ned to Beauty of Art - 157; Is Art Unworthy of Scientifi c Consideration? - 158; Scientifi c Methods which Apply to the Beautiful and Art - 165; Th e Empirical Method - 165; Abstract Refl ection - 166; Th e Philosophical Idea of Artistic Beauty - 166;

Th e Notion of the Beauty of Art - 167; Th e Art-Work is a Creation of Human Activity - 167; Th e Art-Work is Addressed to Human Sense - 172; Th e End or Interest of Art - 178

PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 191Preliminary - 193; Th e Severance of Religion from the Free, Worldly Consciousness - 195; Th e Position of the Philosophy of Religion Relatively to Philosophy and to Religion - 199; Division of the Subject - 206

HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 221Introduction - 223; Th e Notion of the History of Philosophy - 225; Th e Relation of Philosophy to Other Departments of Knowledge - 229; Relation of Philosophy to Religion - 232; Commencement of Philosophy and of Its History - 236; Division of the History of Philosophy - 240

THE END OF INTRODUCTIONS 247Th e End of Introductions - 249; Th e Phenomenology of Spirit - 250; Th e Science of Logic - 251; Th e Philosophy of Right - 253; Th e Philosophy of History - 254; Th e Philosophy of Fine Art - 254; Th e Philosophy of Religion - 255; Th e History of Philosophy - 256; Conclusion - 257; Further Readings - 257

INDEX 261

vii

THE TEXTS

Although the translations used in this volume are no longer under copyright and now in the public domain, the editors would like to gratefully acknowledge both the translators and their publishers for the texts that have served as our sources. Th e present work would not have been possible without them.

All the texts, however, have been slightly altered from the sources: not only have the translations each been modifi ed in part, but also the texts have been abridged for readability and concision. A word on our method of abridgement: we essentially strove to produce a reader-friendly text, one that novices to Hegel could ease into without feeling intimidated; in this eff ort, we not only excluded what was obviously excludable, such as long digressions or internal repetitions, but also excised text if the idea or argument expressed in a certain chapter had been articulated in another chapter elsewhere in the book. Th us, with the excep-tion of the fi nal chapter (from Th e History of Philosophy), Hegels recycling of the same examples and metaphors has been curtailed herein. Th e fi nal chapter, how-ever, weaves together so many threads and themes from all the earlier chapters that it was thought best to permit Hegel to revive all his previously employed im-ages and arguments, such that the overall systematic nature of Hegels thought would be adequately conveyed. For those who seek the complete, unaltered trans-lations of Hegels writings, the editors would advert to the following originals:

Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. J. B. Baillie, New York, Macmillan, 1910.Hegels Science of Logic, trans. W. H. Johnston and L. G. Struthers, vol. 1, 2 vols.

London, George Allen & Unwin, 1929. Philosophy of Right, trans. S. W. Dyde [1896], New York, Dover, 2005. Philosophy of History, trans. J. Sibree [1857], New York, Dover, 1956.Th e Philosophy of Fine Art, trans. F. P. B. Osmaston, vol. 1, 4 vols., London, G. Bell

and Sons, 1920.Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, trans. E. B. Speirs and J. B. Sanderson, vol.

1, 3 vols., London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1895.Hegels Lectures on the History of Philosophy, trans. E. S. Haldane, vol. 1, 3 vols.,

London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1892.

EDITORS INTRODUCTION

Th e life of the ever present Spirit is a circle of progressive embodiments, which looked at in one respect still exist be-side each other, and only as looked at from another point of view appear as past.

3

THE CIRCLE OF KNOWLEDGE

THE CIRCLE OF KNOWLEDGE

Th e present collection consists of a string of diff erent Introductions that Hegel wrote for each of his major works, beginning with the famous (and infamous) Preface to his Phenomenology of Spirit, which celebrated its second centenary in 2007 (it fi rst appeared in 1807, when Hegel was 37 years old).

Aft er 200 years of thought profoundly infl uenced by Hegels magnum opus, we seek through these Introductions to cast a fresh look at the sheer creative in-sight and philosophical brilliance of one of the rather distantly understood great philosophers of modern times. In a crucial sense, his Introductions, seen together in this way, off er a panoramic overview of his grand system, of his conception of philosophy and of his endeavour to bring out an ingenious re-interpretation of many of the classical philosophical ideas. Th is study, at the same time, foreshad-ows many popular themes that one associates with contemporary accounts, social narratives and discourses of history, aesthetics, culture and politics.

Hegels impact on Karl Marx is already well-known and oft en critically dis-cussed. Th rough the texts that follow, the reader will become equally aware of the enormous infl uence that Hegel had on all subsequent European refl ection, from Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Alexandre Kojve, Jean-Paul Sartre and Jacques Lacan to Max Weber, Walter Benjamin, Th eodore Adorno and Jr-gen Habermas, and indeed, even well beyond Europe, from Japans great Kyoto-school philosophers like Nishida, Americas nemesis of pragmatism Josiah Royce, and an entire neo-Hegelian movement in Britain (R. G. Collingwood is an emi-nent fi gure) that in its turn infl uenced a generation of thought throughout the commonwealth and beyond.

In order that the reader may become cognizant of the full range of Hegels in-fl uence, we have chosen and abridged a representative selection of Hegels works treating of a wide variety of disciplines, including philosophy, history, art, and re-

Singh & Mohapatra4

ligious studies. Our sources include: the Phenomenology of Spirit, the Science of Logic, the Philosophy of Right, the Philosophy of History, the Philosophy of Fine Art, the Philosophy of Religion, and the History of Philosophy.

We have specifi cally chosen the Introductions since they are the most acces-sible of Hegels works, and because they lay out the Hegelian project in a concise fashion. Th is book, therefore, will allow the reader to comprehend the whole of the Hegelian System as it is built up from the parts within it, without having to try to locate and gather together his numerous works or the even greater burden of struggling to fathom their depths in their entirety.

Off ering a critical summary of his works, Hegels Introductions stand com-plete in themselves, each capturing a logical facet of Hegels overarching notion of truth. At the same time, seen all together, they present the inter-linkages in Hegels thought, the dialectical progression of one work to another, one philo-sophical moment to another. Before moving on to understand Hegels dialectical System, let us look briefl y at the man himself to gain insight into some of the mo-tivations behind his writings.

G. W. F. Hegel was born into a vibrant and rapidly changing Europe at the end of the eighteenth century, with news of the American Revolution igniting peoples minds, and the eff ects of the French Revolution motivating peoples deeds. Napoleon would soon spread the ideals of the Revolution through con-quest, and indeed, his forces took Hegels city of Jena just when Hegel had fi n-ished writing his Phenomenology of Spirit.

In the German areas, the arts and letters were thriving: Beethoven was com-posing his great Symphonies (his Ninth oft en compared with Hegels Phenom-enology), Goethe was composing his masterpiece Faust (to which, again, Hegels Phenomenology is oft en compared), and the eff ects of Kants Critiques were still reverberating from Prussia throughout the world. Amidst this inspiring cultural milieu, Berlinwhere Hegel would ultimately settlewas being developed into a veritable Athens on the Spree (the main river in Berlin), where the vision of the Enlightenment would fi nd concrete expression in the classicist architecture and sculpture adorning the pompous boulevards that Hegel would perambulate daily.

Synthetic thoughts seemed to reign supreme among the globalized intel-lectuals of the time, whether in their political manifestation as socialism, their aesthetic manifestation as romanticism, their philological manifestation as the search for an Ursprache or proto-Indo-European language ultimately linking all great civilizations at a unifi ed cradle or source, or their philosophical manifesta-tion as a quest for absolute knowledge with not merely a universally valid force, but indeed, a universally comprehensive source. It was in this vein that the Ger-man Indologists so eagerly explored and promulgated whatever morsels of litera-ture or philosophy were available to them from India.

Hegel was himself willy-nilly immersed in this syncretist mood, albeit vec-tored by his peculiar genius. He had the personal ambition to collect from all cor-ners every worthwhile sundry piece of human knowledge and cultural achieve-

Introduction 5

ment and to synthesize it all into one resource, a compendium of complete knowledge, which he would call Th e Encyclopaedia of Philosophical Sciences.

At the centre of the word encyclopaedia we observe the term cyclocircle or cycle. Hegel would consciously use the imagery of the circle as symbol of the com-pleteness of his philosophical System. Having come back round to Hegels Sys-tem, let us now turn to an exposition of Hegels works in order to prepare the reader for what to expect in the Introductions of Hegel to follow.

THE CONCRETION OF KNOWLEDGE

Central to Hegels thought overall is the idea that truth is never abstract; the He-gelian absolute is never a lifeless universal as a bare statement of an aim of phil-osophical work (p. 24).1 In eff ect, Hegel demands that the universal, the general and the abstract must be constantly shaped by a living particular, a rich concre-tion. For this reason, truth for him is mediation; it cannot be untouched pure abstraction. To put this in another way, activity is the condition of being. Some-thing needs to be stirred in action, in thriving reality for it to have meaning and being.

Far from the charges of mechanistic formalism and abstraction, Hegel trans-forms the notion of a pure knowledge to one which is concrete, historically me-diated, derived, evolved, strived for, experienced, lived, and realized. His disdain towards empty schema, skeletal framework of concepts and categories is only in-dicative of his derision against pure formal abstract universals. Th e absolute, uni-versal and objective, then, cannot be seen in isolation of the concrete, the partic-ular and the subjective. Our minds are mediated by history; the real, therefore, for him, is the actual. In contrast to the belief that immediacy and a primal en-counter with knowledge is superior because it is less distorted in human hands, Hegel brings in the idea of mediation, which is necessary for absolute knowledge. Human manipulation in fact brings forth determinate knowledge. It could be remarked, therefore, that there is a certain humanizing dimension that Hegel injects into philosophy, into ontology and knowledge; and by doing this in its en-tirety he gives spirit the full potential access to absolute knowledge. At the end of this process, spirit would become fully itself, mediated by its actions in time.

Th is move in Hegel is, to a large extent, an implication of his phenomenologi-cal turn. Th at this is so is especially clear from his emphasis that the real is the ac-tual; essences are mediated through phenomena, never isolated and abstract. He-gels conception of concretion, then, is fundamentally connected with his view of phenomenology. A brief examination will make this obvious. Phenomenology asserts that the phenomenon can be the ground of absolute knowledge. Th e ety-mology of phenomenology in fact exposes the intrinsic connection between the illumination of self-showing phenomena as such and the idea of uncovering that emerges along the root meaning of logos as laying out or to bare. In Hegel, an

1. Unless otherwise stated in-text references refer to Hegels works in this volume.

Singh & Mohapatra6

exploration is directed at laying bare how consciousness or mind appears to it-self. Hegel criticizes, for this reason, Immanuel Kants conception of phenome-non that seems to act as an obstruction between us and truth, between us and the absolute knowledge of things-in-themselves. Instead, for Hegel, truth shines forth, out of the appearance of an object. It is through the concrete appearance that the real is understood. In fact, we mediate truth; truth or the real is actual-ized through us.

Th e Hegelian absolute is never static and at rest; rather it is a function of a dy-namic, fi ery process. Fundamental to the nature of spirit is its rich concretion, the life of passion, activity, force and will. Th is passionate activity or striving entails that the change which ensues is a product of contradiction, strife, struggle and negativity. Th is brings to mind his celebrated insight as regards dialectic. Th ough this method marks its entry already in Kant in the form of antinomies, Hegels dialectic brings with it, rather, an overcoming of skepticism, not antinomies. An-tinomies show that there is a dead-end at the formulation of certain questions. Th ey proscribe absolute knowledge. Instead, the Hegelian dialectic makes abso-lute knowledge possible. And what then is absolute knowledge? It is the self-re-fl exive subject asserting that it has knowledge of the subject, the object, and the relation between them.

Th e fact that Kant claimed that absolute knowledge is not accessible to us, is a standpoint that itself was never accommodated in his epistemological frame. For Kant, the thing-in-itself is not accessible to us. But in making Kants very overarching standpoint succumb to history, Hegel desires to go beyond Kant, in claiming that this precisely is the evidence that absolute knowledge is possible! If absolute knowledge is unbounded knowledge of things-in-themselves, it really comprises an awareness of the subject, object and the awareness itself. While this is something beyond limits; to express this view from nowhere is a peculiar limi-tation. So, Hegel would argue that in defi ning the limits of knowledge one is al-ready beyond the limits of knowledge.

Further, Hegel is convinced that dialectic is progressive. It exposes contra-dictions, and yet it lays bare a fi eld on which spirit will make the next move. Th e seemingly inconceivable balance of apparently contradictory characters, or the projected harmony of what appear as incompatible elements is founded on the idea of sublation. Hegels use of the richly potent term aufh eben, translated as sublation, connotes simultaneously three entirely diff erent, even confl icting, ide-as: picking up, cancelling, and preserving. It indicates that in any development, these three diff erent moments fuel the spirit in its journey. Something is identi-fi edit is grasped at its point of origin; then, something negative strikes, which, in turn, leads it to the next step where something of the earlier moment is retained still. Strikingly, this is the description of the way all meaningful things evolve.

Now, history is about the spirit realizing its freedom, about the self coming to realize that it is self. Th is self-conscious freedom is nothing other than truth for the spirit. And in order to discover this, the self needs something other-to-it-

Introduction 7

self. Hegel, therefore, posits further that subjectivity is pure negativity. It is here that contradiction fi rst strikes: a contradiction, however, that is central to all de-velopment. Th e subject turns into an object to be more fully a subject; that is how subjectivity develops. For Hegel, subject must be both in-itself (potential) and for-itself (actual)it seeks to objectify, project and comprehend itself as freedom, namely, to be self and to be an object, non-self. As an aside, one may ground here Jean-Paul Sartres thoughts on human freedom and material objects, germane to the distinction between things-in-themselves (en-soi) and things-for-themselves (pour-soi). In being self-refl exive and in being refl ected upon, absolute knowledge is achieved, and that is at the same time, the justifi cation of how absolute knowl-edge is possible.

Although they deal with distinct themes in themselves, the Introductions of Hegel are rather inextricably linked together. Th is is simply a function of He-gels philosophy itself. Hegels thought comes across as a system where all par-ticulars take their respective places along the circle of knowledge or metaphysics. Analogously, each step develops an element in this edifi ce. It is the demand of his systematic philosophy that the varieties of particularsaesthetics, metaphys-ics, ethics, logic, political philosophy and philosophy of religionfi nd themselves united into one organic whole.

Th e pictorial representation of the system in Hegel, though simplifi ed, is therefore best captured as a circle. It is a circle in that it presupposes its ends; yet, its end signals a beginning, for it would present all that which brings it to con-cretion. In Hegel, although the circle appears as a kind of closure, this closure is rather representative of the infi nite, not fi nality. It is infi nite because fundamen-tal to this closure is the concrete progression of the curve, that is, the develop-ment, the movement of the life of the spirit. Th ere is a constant forward and back-ward movement in it. And, for Hegel that is a product of dialectical movement and sublation. 2

Art

ABSOLUTE

SPIRITReligion

Philosophy

LOGIC

PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE

Ethical life

OBJECTIVE

SPIRIT

PHILOSOPHY OF SPIRIT

SUBJECTIVE

SPIRIT

Morality

Law

Psychology

Anthropology

Phenomenology

2. Th is representation is from Walter A. Kaufmann, Hegel: Reinterpretation, Texts and Com-mentary, New York, Doubleday & Company, 1965, p. 243.

Singh & Mohapatra8

THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF SPIRIT

Th e Phenomenology of Spirit is founded on the principle that we do indeed have access to absolute knowledge. Th e life of the spirit, in fact, refl ects a progressive development of truth. Truth is therefore the result of a long travail of history, manifested in a number of ways. For the spirit, the core point of this truth is about realizing its inherent freedom. Th is development, in turn, is impossible without its concrete moments in history. Th e remarkable analogy that is introduced here is that of the relation between a seed, a bud, a fl ower and a fruit, indicative of the organic unity and the progressive sublation of diff erent moments involved in the course of any development. In a sense, the plant cancels the seed, and the fruit cancels the fl ower. But this, Hegel would claim, is best seen as the working out of an inherent contradiction in the positive development of life. Th ough there is a cancelling involved, there is also a picking up and a preserving at each moment. Truth is the actual that is, in turn, a product of the Hegelian systemhis circlewith its moments of sublation.

Just as in Aristotle, becoming falls between being and nothing, change in Hegel is between being and negativity. Th is is functional to any dialectical process, any development. Th e action of subjectivity applies its negative touch to alter the merely given; positivity is mediated by negativity to reach fuller being. In other words, subjectivity alters, moldsor, negatively destroysand forms something else out of positive raw givenness. By adding negation to positivity, one alters it.

Further, it is Hegels conviction that substance is to become subject which, in essence, is nothing but pure freedom in-and-for-itself. Th is brings in the notion of estrangement or alienation, the movement of a thing to what is other-to-itself. Th e essence of substance is freedom. But substance is fully other to subject. Yet, radically, the point of history is that substance becomes subject (or what is whol-ly other-to-itself) through a long diffi cult process at the end of which we realize the absolute.

THE SCIENCE OF LOGIC

For Hegel, logic cannot be a mere schema of empty rules; these rules necessarily need content. Th e idea of a purely formal logic dissociated from truth is absurd to him. Logic cannot be posed against metaphysics, since its content is nothing but, just, metaphysics. Th is drives Hegels famous claim that he presents Gods thought before creation. Progressive truth is a logical culmination of that which is actual in history. No concept, then, is outside time. Truth viewed in this tem-poral scaff old is what makes Hegel a historicist, for whom the recognition of the contextual value of ideas, events and history would be imperative towards culling out a composite notion of truth. A glance at some of the motivations that impel this truth will express this more fully.

Spirit needs science to reach truth, because, for Hegel, science is related to the

Introduction 9

being of things; it is that which grasps the essence of what is in a fundamentally systematic, consistent, inherently necessary way through which the free, concrete spirit acquires absolute knowledge. And phenomenology is about how the spirit realizes itself. It is a labour that the spirit undertakes through tortuous history.

Given the phenomenology of spirit, ontology must accommodate the tem-porality of the universal. Th e philosophical method in Hegel would be science. Now, reason may be negative when it is dialectic, oscillating between being and non-being; and spirit is nothing but reason; so, it is also negativity. When reason is positive, it is universal and it allows thought to be speculative, since it is the con-tribution of reason that particulars are comprehended under a universal. Howev-er, this does not mean that concrete instances of particulars can be isolated away. Reason is spirit because it is reason which understands, and understanding is that which reasons. Th e development of spirit in Hegel therefore is human reason.

Since there is absolute knowledge, as shown in the Phenomenology, what is the relation of logic to this? Hegel accepts the Kantian fundamental structure of mind on the whole. But for Hegel, logic is metaphysics. Science of logic is the doctrine of being. So, while logic purely exhibits the development of spirit, phe-nomenology speaks of the spirit; this spirit is one that undergoes historical devel-opment. Metaphysics is of being, which is, in turn, identical to logic. Th at the es-sence of subject is spirit, and spirit is freedom therefore forms the foundation of logic when it comes to trace the journey of the spirit.

Now, for Aristotle, categories are the means through which one has access to beings, or things-in-themselves. Kant, however, posits that although categories may be able to give phenomenal knowledge, they nevertheless block off access to things-in-themselves. Hegel returns to the Greek spirit in claiming that not only are logical categories the only access to absolute knowledge, this logic is identical to reason or spirit; in other words, to being. Moreover, this logic is concretely, his-torically rooted in the development of spirit. Th e content of logic is reason, and reason is substance which is nothing but subject or the spirit, which, in turn, is nothing but the object.

In investigating the nature of logic, Hegel would point out that thought has an object, and it is its content which has a truth value. However, formal logic de-mands that any content lies outside the scope of logic. In contrast, thought for Hegel relies on an object for truth, and reason is the source of truth. What is abso-lute knowledge, if it was not that truth, certainty and validity would cohere in it? A syllogism in such a scheme would be one where whatever is valid is also true and vice versa, evocative of the Hegelian formulation that the real is the actual and the actual is the real. If validity were separated from reality or truth, then that would not be logic for Hegel. Th e content of logic, treated substantially, then, would be the thing-in-itself.

If absolute knowledge is reached then logic must have progressed. Th e essence of spirit thereby captures reason as it progresses. If phenomenology is the content of the concrete development of how spirit develops, logic is the form, the laws of

Singh & Mohapatra10

reason. Th us, Hegel defi nes logic as spirits knowledge of its own pure essence (p. 74). Further, logic must have a systematic, organic arrangement of how its various parts are to relate. It should be modelled on the self-development of spirit, which is found in history, the ground on which spirits actuality is brought forth. To re-alize the spirits essence, its freedom, a moment gives determination. Th e imma-nent development of a concept forms, thus, spirits self-consciousness. For this reason, the sort of knowing involved here is one which is concrete, engrossed in the others externality. Philosophy brings forth this exhibition of the forwardbackward movement of spirit. Religion, philosophy and art have therefore the same content of truth. It is in their form alone that they diff er.

Hegel shows the way to go from being-in-itself (metaphysics) through objec-tive logic to being-for-itself (traditional logic) by subjective logic. Being-in-itself is external and immediate. Th is uses the concept of mediation, and it is here that dialectic becomes important. While the Platonic dialectic is externalarbitrary in a senseor merely procedural, the Kantian dialectic is a step higher. It is criti-cal, internal to reason but its end is negative, since it results in antinomies. He-gelian dialectic however is speculative; it is internal to reason, but it is the unity of the positive and the negative. Phenomenology of spirit is as much affi rmation, as negation and sublation. It does not end with nullity, but rather with absolute knowledge.

Logic comes aft er phenomenology in the Hegelian circle. Logic must, accord-ing to Hegel, also go through a progression, an evolution. Th is organic logic is the essence of spirit. Essence comes through only with appearance that shines forth; it is meaningful when mediated by appearance. To appear is to appear as quali-fi ed, quantifi ed, measured, etc. to someone. Th is is the reason why the table of categories include Being, Becoming, Nothing, Quality, Quantity, and so on. Ap-pearances are mediated by these categories; and in this manner, logic is integral to phenomenology. Absolute knowledge, then, is precisely this identity of essenc-es and appearances that shows forth in logic. And once more, it is a logic whose dead bones must be re-vivifi ed by spirit (p. 75).

THE PHILOSOPHY OF RIGHT

Hegels Philosophy of Right is at the same time a phenomenology of right, which, according to Hegels view of man and the state, turns out to bejust as in his philosophy of history (about which more will follow)a phenomenology of free-dom. Th e idea of right is freedom, Hegel argues, and not abstract, theoretical free-dom, but concrete ethico-political freedom.

In articulating the nature of concrete freedom, Hegel also delves into its con-trary, which he calls the mere freedom of the understanding, or negative freedom. Th is type of freedom is characterized by an absorption of the would-be citizen (who should be the true locus of real freedom) into some other, such as God (i.e., substance), or else some political ideal or universal. Th is is what leads to fanati-cism in political and religious life.

Introduction 11

When speaking of the political and of right, it is essential to delve into the nature of the will. Th e interrelation of the will and freedom are to be expected in any account of the will; what is unique and fascinating in Hegels account is the interrelationat times bordering on equationof the will and thought or rea-son. It is the emphasis on rational willing, or willful reason, that serves to funda-mentally distinguish Hegels account of the political from other enlightenment theorists such as Rousseau or Locke.

In addition to an exhaustive account of the will, a necessary propaedeutic to any philosophy of right, of the state, and above all of the citizen, Hegel enters into a fascinating and indeed characteristic discussion of the true scope, sense and meaningin fact, ambiguityof the terms subjective and objective. He intends to refl ect on the structure of subjectivity in order to defl ect traditional dichotomies between subject and object, creating the necessary space for his own reinterpreta-tion of the form and content of ethical and political freedom vis--vis (objective) laws, both moral and civil.

By rethinking the nature of willing, the subject-object dualism, and also by treating the entire content of the political dialectically (which is to say as inher-ently logical, rather than as the mere external ordering by some subjective agency), Hegel creates a philosophy of right, of law, of the state, that off ers us the gloriously optimistic notion that there has been and continues to be a rational development, an inherent progress, in the political domain, and that concrete, actual freedom for all is to be its inevitable result.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY

If in Phenomenology Hegel shows that absolute knowledge is possible, and that the spirit is the embodiment of that knowledge, then how in fact spirit realiz-es itself is the account of a philosophy of history. In his outlining of history, we therefore see a characterization of the development of Spirit in Time (p. 149). If phenomenology is about the spirit appearing to itself, it does this in tracing the movement from ignorance to absolute knowingto understand the real through the actual. In fact, reason is the essence of the real and it reveals itself in the world in history. History for Hegel, therefore, is a rational process and is a development of a kernel that was there already present.

Clearly, the emphasis on the rationality of history is a much contended idea owing both to the determinism and the tacit epistemic/moral justifi cation that it entails. Hegel seems to view history as a product of dialectics, where the re-sultant moment is somehow superior to the original. However, he certainly does not appear to be blind to the deep unease associated with the claim that there is reason in history. Th e fact that he maintains the notion of the rational (and, ul-timately, progressive development) despite the apparent incoherence and contin-gency of human history is, if anything, consistent with his encyclopedic system as a whole.

In recounting the tale of history, Hegel pictures it as an array of events and ac-

Singh & Mohapatra12

tionsstrange, inspiring, loathsome, glorious, banalof a vast picture of chang-es and transactions (p. 149), of a motliest throng of events drawing us within the circle of its interest (p. 150), of the ruins of some ancient sovereignty (p. 150), caus-ing sorrow at the decay of a splendid and highly cultured national life (p. 150), among others. In putting these together, Hegel seems to bring out, once again, his underlying principled intuition about the way life typically evolves itself.

Th at dissolution, involves at the same time the rise of new lifethat while death is the issue of life, life is also the issue of death (p. 150) merely recasts He-gels passionate insight that the evolution of the spirit is dialectical and progres-sive. Th e spirit makes war upon itself (p. 150) to create new material out of it-self for successive endeavours. If there is a rational necessity about the dialectical life of the spirit, then history by default must express this reason, since history is nothing but development of spirit in time. For this reason, each moment is as in-tegral as another to the development of the spirit.

History is eternally present, and yet it is true only because it is actualized through every determinate moment. Th is however does not determine us, because the realization of truth was something that was latent; and it is what the spirit sought to realize anyway. Th e nature of spirit is such that its essence is freedom, a centre that is within itself. A depiction of spirit in terms of its freedom then only reinforces the idea that it actualizes itself in history to arrive at the real. And, this real is mediated; since the very essence of Spirit is activity (p. 150). Hegels idea that reason guides history therefore is coupled with the view that passion is the fuel of history. If this is so, then logically speaking, there is no end of history. Instead, a raging theatre of phenomena confronts us where spirit is working itself out in a constant restless fashion. In Hegel, we see that history is constantly cycled and recycled. Once more, therefore, we return to the circle.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF FINE ART

Hegel turns to spirits engagement with art in a characteristic phenomenological intervention. While the aesthetics involves perception, the word kalos means the fi ne, noble and the excellent, as well as skill and moral virtue. Th e word used in German is schne. Excellence is, then, both beautiful and virtuous. Percep-tion, on the other hand, is to do with surface and appearance. Th is comes from the word schein or what merely seems. Now, of course, the point of art is about schne (the beautiful) coming out of schein (what seems), and this is something that needs to be justifi ed. Th e justifi cation is a demand that almost the whole of the rationalist tradition since Plato, in particular, places. For Plato, art is unreal appearance, because it lies in the realm of perceptionchanging, disintegrating in the world, like illusions. His claim is, of course, based on a framework of real-ity; a reality that is, ultimately invariant, immutable, eternal, spaceless, timeless, and consisting of absolute essences. Th e unreality of art comes from the fact of its change, and further, from Platos view that what is merely seen is ultimately un-real. Art for him lies in the realm of the sensible, i.e., in the world of change. In

Introduction 13

contrast, mathematical truths are ever real because they are unperceived, pure and sublime. Platos idea comes across, then, as the drive to separate the invisible/in-telligible from the visible/sensible, to separate the world of abstract form of Beau-ty from particular objects that may be beautiful, to separate the original from the copy, and so on.

In some sense, this is perhaps the total antithesis of the Hegelian view. Th e only way that one can hold on to the view that beauty can come through art, or that schne can come out of schein, is by arguing that schein itself is. Th at is, ap-pearance itself is the ground of the real. Th is dramatic move comes forth explicitly in the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl, more radically in Martin Heidegger; but originally in Hegel.

Truth is truth because it shows itself, not because it is hidden. As Heidegger points out in Being and Time, phenomenology uncovers that which is in fact shining. Th e original Greek meaning of phenomena is rephrased as: that which shows itself is the Being of entities, its meaning3 as opposed to Kant who nur-tures the distinction between phenomena (appearance) and noumena (the realm of things-in-themselves). Because, in general, phenomenon is covered, undiscov-ered, buried or hidden, phenomenology is needed. But in actuality, phenomenon shines, shows itself as itself. Th at which phenomenology lets us see is something that lies hidden.4 For Heidegger, like Hegel, the phenomenon is not a mere sem-blance, seeming or appearance, as it is for Kant. Heidegger reaffi rms this by highlighting that truth or aletheia is nothing but that which is uncovered by phenomenology. It is in fact, that which shows itself as it is in itself. Th e phenom-enon, then, can be the thing-in-itself. Indeed, we even have direct access to it since it simply shines forth. Th is idea pervades the Hegelian spirit and is reinforced in the insight that there could be no such thing as truth if it did not appear, or, rath-er, let itself appear (p. 161).

In Hegel, there is a move, in fact, towards a reinterpretation of art, deriving out of this typically phenomenological stance. He overturns Platos idea of a bad transitory worldwhere art is deception, where it fi gures lowest in the divided line, having the lowest degree of realityto something else altogether. For He-gel, rather, the mere physical world is lower than art. In fact, art lift s the spirit away from this bad physical world. Truth is truth only when it appears; and art liberates the true from what is merely physical. Again, to draw a comparison, this too appears at the core of Heideggers thought, as evident from Th e Origin of the Work of Art (1950),5 which posits that art lights up mere earth to disclose a world of truth. For Hegel, the essence of art is that it is the vehicle of the spirit. In contrast to the divided line in Plato, Hegel construes art instead as a kind of

3. Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson, San Francisco, Harper, 1962, p. 60. 4. Heidegger, Being and Time, p. 59. 5. Martin Heidegger, Th e Origin of the Work of Art, in Off the Beaten Track, trans. Julian Young and Kenneth Haynes, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2002, pp. 1-56.

Singh & Mohapatra14

bridge for the spirit to move from the physical to the rational; in other words, to freedom.

Th ere is a constant tension in attempting to answer as to whether Hegel is an absolutist or a relativist when it comes to art. While, the particularity of civ-ilization and time certainly dominates the art of a nationthe specifi c form is a foreignness that art displaysyet somehow all these varied forms have the same universal content, and that is what is essential to them.6 What is universal about artits content, namely the Ideacan be found by overcoming its for-eignness which is only the aspect of its form, namely the confi guration of sensu-ous material.7 On the one hand, there is the sensuous which deals with percep-tion or aesthesis, and on the other, there is the spirit which indulges in cognition, knowledge and is guided by reason, idea or the concept. Th ere is a kind of confl ict here. Art points to the spirit, and yet it has to do with passion, senses, interests, deception, imitation and the sensuous. Existent works have the requirement that they are sensed. Th is derives out of the constant demand for the concrete in He-gel. Th e Platonic abstraction is, by defi nition, outside concretion, so it is insuffi -cient.8 For Hegel, everything, including art, must be organically tied to spirit. It has to have internal logic. Th e ideal of beauty must be fi lled in with the concrete, which is again a product of dialectic, and that is the basis of scientifi c treatment. Th ough paradoxical, in a way therefore both universality and relativity are found together in Hegel.

Why do we have art in the fi rst place? Hegel claims that the universal de-mand for artistic expression is based on the rational impulse in mans nature to exalt both the world of his soul experience and that of Nature for himself into the conscious embrace of mind as an object in which he rediscovers himself (pp. 171-2). One can be in-itself and for-itself. In art, one rediscovers oneself, in see-ing both the modes of ones being. Moreover, in art, one represents or duplicates. Since man is a free subject, and that is something universal about art, it can be said that art adds the stamp of the human in the act of re-presentation. One sees art as duplicate when one contemplates on it, and it is art itself that allows one to con-template that way. In the Phenomenology, it is shown that nature is the anti-the-sis of spirit. Man is free by wrestling with nature, by shaping, molding, carving, creating, and refi ning natural things to bring the spirit to manifest. By this, one also removes their foreignness. A similar situation emerges in art. What is merely sensuous is there as a key to reveal in/for-itself. It turns our attention to how the sensuous is there for man (p. 173-4). We can let a work of art be in freedom, even in its sensuousness. It is therefore entirely diff erent from other material objects which are not in freedom.

In Kants Critique of Judgment, natural beauty is seen as art. Further, what is

6. See G. W. F. Hegel, Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art, trans. T. M. Knox, vol. 1, 2 vols., Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1975, p. 20. 7. Hegel, Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art, p. 70. 8. Hegel, Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art, p. 22.

Introduction 15

the ineff able or the sublime is also beautiful. Hegel rejects both. Fine art is created out of a destruction of nature, it is not nature itself. For Hegel, it is absurd to con-ceive that the aim of art is imitation. Nature is just too vivid and dynamic in its raw materiality than art, and it is therefore pointless to attempt to imitate it.

Also, for Hegel, art is not ineff able, mystical, and indescribable. Th e nature of everything according to the phenomenologicasl approach is that it is already all laid out, so ineff ability can only be a product of lack of experience and knowl-edge. Philosophy of Art thus does not quite permit something wholly mysterious. If one knows enough, one knows why art moves us so much. If we understood the history, culture, religion, spirit of a civilization, then we would understand art completely.

To return to the confl ict, the problem of art is that it is sensuous. Hegel how-ever reverses the dogma. And this is picked up by Husserl and Heidegger in their phenomenology. To the question of why art is rational, Hegel would answer that it is so because it creates the stamp of the human over nature. Th e dialectic in art consists in its destruction of the natural in order to lift it to the spiritual. Th e question of relativity versus universality in Hegel appears in a kind of dialectic again and this universality is achieved in overcoming the foreignness of form (ow-ing to space and time).

Contrary to common opinion, the aim of art also cannot merely be the ex-pression of subjective passions. Th at is too romantic a notion for Hegel; there is too much turbulence in it. Art can be viewed as analogous to a state which is a product of order and law (p. 179 ff .). Art is liberation because of its representative character. It frees the spirit from the sensuous by means of the sensuous alone. And that is concretion at play once more.

Again, Hegel dismisses the idea that the aim of art is purifi cation/catharsis or moral. We delight in art, and this needs to be recognized. Yet this shows that art needs a higher purposethat is dialectic. If we say art is for a moral purpose, it amounts to claiming that art has an external reason. However, for Hegel, the aim of art must be internal to it, with an inner dialectic that will ultimately lift spirit to freedomfrom the sensuous with the sensuous. Th is dialectic dissolves diff er-ences which are now preserved in objectivity, and not in the subject, as for Kant where subjectivity had no access to absolute knowledge. In the Hegelian concep-tion, instead, there appears a unity of the particular and the universal, of necessity and freedom, of sense and reason. In looking at art, thus, Hegel posits that feeling is in reason, idea is in the sensuous.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

In conceiving of a philosophy of religion Hegel seeks to accentuate its import for the spirit. An overview of his work suggests: fi rst, that the familiar triadic structure manifests here as wellthe universal/objective, the particular/subjec-tive, and the absolute. But given that this dialectic already appears with Kant,

Singh & Mohapatra16

the real originality of Hegel consists in the fact that he is able to put these mo-ments together in an order: conceptual and historical. In its universal aspect, re-ligion as such is the object of study; in its particular aspect, a comparative study of various world religions is undertaken. Finally, the absolute is one that Hegel proposes to be most satisfyingit is that which incorporates all that is good in a religion, and which dialectically supersedes all other religions. It is argued that the movement from the one to the other is inherently necessary, and that they are all placed within an integrated philosophical system where each form has its own signifi cance.

Religion, like other things, is a growing organic phenomenon. A particular religion is present somewhere, which is the complex of a specifi c historical cir-cumstance. And yet particularities are only portions, they are unequal to the whole. Th e revealed religion is always present, already contained in the particular religions. Religion, therefore, is a product of a philosophy of history, however, its real contentthe absoluteis something that was already there, but needed to be manifested through historical time.

If God is truth, Hegel must show that in order that absolute knowledge is possible (that it is, in fact, necessary), Gods truth must be conceivable, rationally comprehensible. Hegel rejects the idea that God is something wholly other. God is the spirit, the idea, the reason. Hegel therefore rejects the romanticists view that truth is in feeling. Th is would be for him an unscientifi c way to approach an issue. Again, Hegel rejects the ideas both (a) that there is a particular relation, namely god is the other; and (b) that god is ineff able and completely mysterious, in which case this relation is not determinate. Just as in art, in his philosophy of religion, too, Hegel attempts to seek the spirit.

Th e argument relating the ordinary conception of religionthat it is feel-ingis a problem for Hegel. If it is feeling, it should be wholly individual. How-ever, we see that the existence of religion is over an entire community, a culture in a given context. In that case, however, the confl icting faiths would confront, and they will have expression in the confl ict of states and nations. Th e expression of the absolute in religion is precisely to overcome individual diff erences. Th is, of course, raises the question as to whether for Hegel the whole point of particu-larities are their syntheses. In response, we may point out that, even so, the fact remains that in Hegels conception of religion, subjectivity is sought to be fully articulated, and ultimately, God is achieved in reason, not in subjective passion, which is certainly a necessary moment, but not the fi nal one.

Th e other way of looking at religion is through the mode of worship. In wor-ship, one attempts to make contact with God or absolute spirit. Th at is, absolute spirit is realized through subjective spirit. But this absolute spirit can never be wholly other. In fact, objective spirit is not diff erent from subjective spirit, and hence, in the act of worship there is a return of the spirit to itselfthat which was divided, isolated from itself now returns to itself. Worship, however, is only the operation of refl ection; Philosophy, on the other hand, reconciles this chasm

Introduction 17

by thinking knowledge, for the spirit seeks Being into itself. Th is being-at-home-with-self, or coming-to-self, is for Hegel, its complete and highest end. Religion is that in which spirit realizes what God is, or absolute spirit; in phenomenology, logic, and history, too, as we have already seen, it is, once more, the absolute spirit that realizes itself.

THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY

For Hegel, philosophy is the history of philosophy.9 Th e progressive development of history shows that there is a reason underlying every step, every link. It is Dav-id Humes skepticism, for instance, that makes Kant possible in the way we know him; the former is a necessary step for the latter to appear. In fact, each step acts as a catalyst for the spirit to move forward to the next one. History of spirit seeks its liberation, which basically consists in absolute knowledge. And yet in so far as skepticism is necessary to this liberation, the history of the movement from skep-ticism to absolute knowledge tells us something essential about the spirit. It is through the history of philosophy that the spirit works itself out.

Spirit has potentiality. It is in-itself, and it has the power to become for-itself, by becoming concrete. It has the power to create freedom for-itself. In the begin-ning, a spirit may be in-itself, in animality; and in the end it could be for-itself, in freedom. Being at-home-with-self is the highest end (p. 227), and this is precisely concrete freedom, in essence.

If spirit is alienated and divided, through the history of philosophy it would work toward uniting itself to itself. Th is freedom is the aim of spirit. Anything that stands against us, or any object, is recognized because of the value we give to it. Th at is why, for Hegel, history is to be understood in terms of spirits freedom, which is essentially manifested as political freedom.

In the Phenomenology, we see that spirits nature is negativity; in contrast, na-ture is characterized as positivity. Th ough nature is positivea full solid substanti-alityit is ultimately divided because its centre, that is gravity, is outside it. Spirit, though presently described as negativity, is ultimately undivided because its centre of freedom is within itself. In other words, spirit can be free, nature cannot be.

Furthermore, spirit is a function of dialectics. And the process of mediation in the case of spirit is history. Philosophy is, then, the mediating link between the subjective spirit and the absolute. Th is return to itself is something that the dia-lectical process facilitates. For Hegel, there is a certain necessity about events in the world, since everything is inherently connected. Moreover, the end is always a result of a process of striving. It is a thriving fi eld of labour.

CLOSING THE CIRCLE

Th e preoccupation with truth, to conclude, then, is the absolute object of spirit.

9. G. W. F. Hegel, Hegels Lectures on the History of Philosophy, trans. E. S. Haldane, vol. 1, 3 vols., London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1892, p. 30.

Singh & Mohapatra18

Th ere is a triadic structure that Hegel has across all of his many works: subjective, objective and absolute. Th is structure allows him to bring in dialectics, sublation, and mediation. We see in Hegel a certain circle of a system, which presupposes its end by this dialectical progress. Th e concretion has within it both the execution and the end or the aim. It is the peculiar inner necessity of the Hegelian system that there is movement from one step to another. What follows illustrates the di-rection that the spirit takes:

Logic is in-itself but not for-itself. It is truth refl ecting Gods thought before creation. Nature is fi nite. It is creation without the presence of man. Subjective spirit has man in an image. It is the subject of the Phenomenology. Objective spirit has man in community. Th e Philosophy of History and the Philosophy of Right study this. Absolute spirit is captured in art, religion and philosophy. In the moment of religion, it refl ects the unity betweenGod and the individual, refl ecting pure freedom. Th is liberation is based on the idea, however, that the identity was something already there in the fi rst place.

In their content, therefore, art, religion, and philosophy stand on the same foot-ing, insofar as they all seek truth. For Hegel, though, art is subordinate to reli-gion, and religion subordinate to philosophy. In art, the sensuous material grasps the concept or idea, namely, its content. Th e defect of art lies in that it yields a sen-suous manipulation of the idea. Although it breathes spirit into matter, the idea or concept itself is not sensuous. Th e problem with religion, again, is the anchor in pictorial thinking. Like art, it is not entirely free from form, since religious consciousness views God as incarnate or in some representative form. In the act of worship, in fact, spirit is back to its subjective character since feeling is indis-pensable in it.

If religion is higher than art because of the fact that in art concept is not quite suitable to sensuous material, then religion is defective too because man is still the subjective form in this act. Art breathes out spirit, making it external; religion breathes in spirit, making it internal. In art, spirit has taken itself as objective. In religion, spirit has returned to self, but it turns out that it is not without feeling. So, the limitation of religion emanates out of pictorial thinking and associated feeling. Religion begins as being external and objective and then becomes com-pletely internal. Th is inwardness is not the highest form of truth for Hegel. It is

Introduction 19

not fully adequate for the spirit. Philosophy therefore emerges as the fi eld of un-mingled thinking, not mixed with subjective feeling, not mingled with pictorial thinking. Th at is, it displays free thinking; it is pure, perfect, and absolute.

Freedom consists in the fact that what confronts a subject is not alien to it; the subject fi nds oneself in it, and at home. Th us, when foreignness is overcome, freedom is realized. Art and religion for that reason unite in philosophy, preserv-ing the content of truth while sublating the form, placing it in the realm of the absolute. Since true thought is the most universal, Hegel is able to seek the spirits abode in the unity of its form (or Idea) and content (or truth) in a fi ery existential reality called life.

REFERENCES

Hegel, G. W. F., Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. J. B. Baillie, New York, Macmil-lan, 1910 [1807].

Hegel, G. W. F., Hegels Science of Logic, trans., W. H. Johnston and L. G. Stru-thers, London, George Allen & Unwin, 1929 [1812].

Hegel, G. W. F., Philosophy of History, trans. J. Sibree, New York, Dover, 1956 [1837].

Hegel, G. W. F., Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art, trans. T. M. Knox, vol. 1, 2 vols., Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1975 [1835].

Hegel, G. W. F., Th e Philosophy of Fine Art, trans. F. P. B. Osmaston, vol. 1, 4 vols., London, G. Bell and Sons, 1920 [1835].

Hegel, G. W. F., Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, trans. E. B. Speirs and J. B. Sanderson, vol. 1, 3 vols., London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1895 [1832].

Hegel, G. W. F., Hegels Lectures on the History of Philosophy, trans. E. S. Haldane, vol. 1, 3 vols., London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1892 [1837].

Heidegger, Martin, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robin-son, San Francisco, Harper, 1962 [1927].

Heidegger, Martin, Th e Origin of the Work of Art , in Off the Beaten Track, trans. Julian Young and Kenneth Haynes, Cambridge, Cambridge Univer-sity Press, 2002 [1950], pp. 1-56.

Kaufmann, Walter A., Hegel: Reinterpretation, Texts and Commentary, New York, Doubleday & Company, 1965.

PHENOMENOLOGY OF SPIRIT

Appearance is the process of arising into being and pass-ing away again, a process that itself does not arise and does not pass away, but is per se, and constitutes reality and the life-movement of truth. Th e truth is thus the bacchanalian revel, where not a member is sober; and because every mem-ber no sooner becomes detached than it eo ipso collapses straightway, the revel is just as much a state of transparent unbroken calm.

23

1

PHENOMENOLOGY OF SPIRIT

PREFACE: ON SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE

In the case of a philosophical work it seems not only superfl uous, but, in view of the nature of philosophy, even inappropriate and misleading to begin, as writers usually do in a preface, by explaining the end the author had in mind, the circum-stances which gave rise to the work, and the relation in which the writer takes it to stand to other treatises on the same subject, written by his predecessors or his contemporaries. For whatever it might be suitable to state about philosophy in a prefacesay, an historical sketch of the main drift and point of view, the gen-eral content and results, a string of desultory assertions and assurances about the truththis cannot be accepted as the form and manner in which to expound philosophical truth.

Moreover, because philosophy has its being essentially in the element of that universality which encloses the particular within it, the end or fi nal result seems, in the case of philosophy more than in that of other sciences, to have absolutely expressed the complete fact itself in its very nature; contrasted with that the mere process of bringing it to light would seem, properly speaking, to have no essential signifi cance. On the other hand, in the general idea of, e.g., anatomythe knowl-edge of the parts of the body regarded as lifelesswe are quite sure we do not pos-sess the objective concrete fact, the actual content of the science, but must, over and above, be concerned with particulars. Further, in the case of such a collection of items of knowledge, which has no real right to the name of science, any talk about purpose and suchlike generalities is not commonly very diff erent from the descriptive and superfi cial way in which the contents of the science these nerves and muscles, etc. are themselves spoken of. In philosophy, on the other hand, it would at once be felt incongruous were such a method made use of and yet shown by philosophy itself to be incapable of grasping the truth.

In the same way too, by determining the relation which a philosophical work

G. W. F. Hegel24

professes to have to other treatises on the same subject, an extraneous interest is introduced, and obscurity is thrown over the point at issue in the knowledge of the truth. Th e more the ordinary mind takes the opposition between true and false to be fi xed, the more is it accustomed to expect either agreement or contra-diction with a given philosophical system, and only to see reason for the one or the other in any explanatory statement concerning such a system. It does not con-ceive the diversity of philosophical systems as the progressive evolution of truth; rather, it sees only contradiction in that variety. Th e bud disappears when the blossom breaks through, and we might say that the former is refuted by the latter; in the same way when the fruit comes, the blossom may be explained to be a false form of the plants existence, for the fruit appears as its true nature in place of the blossom. Th ese stages are not merely diff erentiated; they supplant one another as being incompatible with one another. But the ceaseless activity of their own in-herent nature makes them at the same time moments of an organic unity, where they not merely do not contradict one another, but where one is as necessary as the other; and this equal necessity of all moments constitutes alone and thereby the life of the whole. But contradiction as between philosophical systems is not wont to be conceived in this way; on the other hand, the mind perceiving the con-tradiction does not commonly know how to relieve it or keep it free from its one-sidedness, and to recognize in what seems confl icting and inherently antagonistic the presence of mutually necessary moments.

Th e demand for such explanations as also the attempts to satisfy this demand, very easily, pass for the essential business philosophy has to undertake. Where could the inmost truth of a philosophical work be found better expressed than in its purposes and results? If, however, such procedure is to pass for more than the beginning of knowledge, if it is to pass for actually knowing, then we must, in point of fact, look on it as a device for avoiding the real business at issue, an at-tempt to combine the appearance of being in earnest and taking trouble about the subject with an actual neglect of the subject altogether. For the real subject-matter is not exhausted in its purpose, but in working the matter out; nor is the mere re-sult attained the concrete whole itself, but the result along with the process of ar-riving at it. Th e purpose of itself is a lifeless universal, just as the general drift is a mere activity in a certain direction, which is still without its concrete realization; and the naked result is the corpse of the system which has left its guiding tendency behind it. Similarly, the distinctive diff erence of anything is rather the boundary, the limit, of the subject; it is found at that point where the subject-matter stops, or it is what this subject-matter is not. To trouble oneself in this fashion with the purpose and results, and again with the diff erences, the positions taken up and judgments passed by one thinker and another, is therefore an easier task than per-haps it seems. For instead of laying hold of the matter in hand, a procedure of that kind is all the while away from the subject altogether. Instead of dwelling within it and becoming absorbed by it, knowledge of that sort is always grasping at some-thing else; such knowledge, instead keeping to the subject-matter and giving itself

Phenomenology of Spirit 25

up to it, never gets away from itself. Th e easiest thing of all is to pass judgments on what has a solid substantial content; it is more diffi cult to grasp it, and most of all diffi cult to do both together and produce the systematic exposition of it.

Th e beginning of culture and of the struggle to pass out of the unbroken im-mediacy of naive Psychical life has always to be made by acquiring knowledge of universal principles and points of view, by striving, in the fi rst instance, to work up simply to the thought of the subject-matter in general, not forgetting at the same time to give reasons for supporting it or refuting it, to apprehend the con-crete riches and fullness contained in its various determinate qualities, and to know how to furnish a coherent, orderly account of it and a responsible judgment upon it. Th is beginning of mental cultivation will, however, very soon make way for the earnestness of actual life in all its fullness, which leads to a living experi-ence of the subject-matter itself; and when, in addition, conceptual thought stren-uously penetrates to the very depths of its meaning, such knowledge and style of judgment will keep their due place in everyday thought and conversation.

THE ELEMENT OF TRUTH IS THE CONCEPT/NOTION (BEGRIFF), AND ITS TRUE FORM, THE SCIENTIFIC SYSTEM

Th e systematic development of truth in scientifi c form can alone be the true shape in which truth exists. To help to bring philosophy nearer to the form of sci-encethat goal where it can lay aside the name of love of knowledge and be actual knowledgethat is what I have set before me. Th e inner necessity that knowledge should be science lies in its very nature; and the adequate and suffi cient explana-tion for this lies simply and solely in the systematic exposition of philosophy it-self. Th e external necessity, however, so far as this is apprehended in a universal way, and apart from the accident of the personal element and the particular oc-casioning infl uences aff ecting the individual, is the same as the internal: it lies in the form and shape in which the process of time presents the existence of its mo-ments. To show that the time process does raise philosophy to the level of scien-tifi c system would, therefore, be the only true justifi cation of the attempts which aim at proving that philosophy must assume this character; because the temporal process would thus bring out and lay bare the necessity of it, nay, more, would at the same time be carrying out that very aim itself.

When we state the true form of truth to be its scientifi c characteror, what is the same thing, when it is maintained that truth fi nds the medium of its ex-istence in notions or conceptions aloneI know that this seems to contradict an idea with all its consequences which makes great pretensions and has gained widespread acceptance and conviction at the present time. A word of explanation concerning this contradiction seems, therefore, not out of place, even though at this stage it can amount to no more than a dogmatic assurance exactly like the view we are opposing. If, that is to say, truth exists merely in what, or rather exists merely as what, is called at one time intuition, at another immediate knowledge of

G. W. F. Hegel26

the Absolute, Religion, Beingnot being in the centre of divine love, but the very Being of this centre, of the Absolute itselffrom that point of view it is rather the opposite of the notional or conceptual form which would be required for system-atic philosophical exposition. Th e Absolute on this view is not to be grasped in conceptual form, but felt, intuited; it is not its conception, but the feeling of it and intuition of it that are to have the say and fi nd expression.

PRESENT POSITION OF THE SPIRIT

If we consider the appearance of a claim like this in its more general setting, and look at the level which the self-conscious spirit at present occupies, we shall fi nd that self-consciousness has got beyond the substantial fullness of life, which it used to carry on in the element of thoughtbeyond the state of immediacy of belief, beyond the satisfaction and security arising from the assurance which con-sciousness possessed of being reconciled with ultimate reality and with its all per-vading presence, within as well as without. Self-conscious spirit has not merely passed beyond that to the opposite extreme of insubstantial refl ection of self into self, but beyond this too. It has not merely lost its essential and concrete life, it is also conscious of this loss and of the transitory fi nitude characteristic of its con-tent. Turning away from the husks it has to feed on, and confessing that it lies in wickedness and sin, it reviles itself for so doing, and now desires from philoso-phy not so much to bring it to a knowledge of what it is, as to obtain once again through philosophy the restoration of that sense of solidity and substantiality of existence it has lost. Philosophy is thus expected not so much to meet this want by opening up the compact solidity of substantial existence, and bringing this to the light and level of self-consciousnessis not so much to bring chaotic con-scious life back to the orderly ways of thought, and the simplicity of the notion, as to run together what thought has divided asunder, suppress the notion with its distinctions, and restore the feeling of existence. What it wants from philosophy is not so much insight as edifi cation. Th e beautiful, the holy, the eternal, religion, lovethese are the bait required to awaken the desire to bite: not the notion, but ecstasy, not the march of cold necessity in the subject-matter, but ferment and en-thusiasmthese are to be the ways by which the wealth of the concrete substance is to be stored and increasingly extended.

With this demand there goes the strenuous eff ort, almost perfervidly zealous in its activity, to rescue mankind from being sunken in what is sensuous, vulgar, and of fl eeting importance, and to raise mens eyes to the stars; as if men had quite forgotten the divine, and were on the verge of fi nding satisfaction, like worms, in mud and water. Time was when man had a heaven, decked and fi tted out with endless wealth of thoughts and pictures. Th e signifi cance of all that is, lay in the thread of light by which it was attached to heaven; instead of dwelling in the present as it is here and now, the eye glanced away over the present to the Divine, away, so to say, to a present that lies beyond. Spirits gaze had to be directed under compulsion to what is earthly, and kept fi xed there; and it has needed a long time

Phenomenology of Spirit 27

to introduce that clearness, which only celestial realities had, into the crassness and confusion shrouding the sense of things, earthly, and to make attention to the immediate present as such, which was called Experience, of interest and of val-ue. Now we have apparently the need for the opposite of all this; mans mind and interest are so deeply rooted in the earthly that we require a like power to have them raised above that level. His spirit shows such poverty of nature that it seems to long for the mere pitiful feeling of the divine in the abstract, and to get refresh-ment from that, like a wanderer in the desert craving for the merest mouthful of water. By the little which can thus satisfy the needs of the human spirit we can measure the extent of its loss.

Th is easy contentment in receiving, or stinginess in giving, does not suit the character of science. Th e man who only seeks edifi cation, who wants to envelop in mist the manifold diversity of his earthly existence and thought, and craves af-ter the vague enjoyment of this vague and indeterminate Divinityhe may look where he likes to fi nd this: he will easily fi nd for himself the means to procure something he can rave over and puff himself up with. But philosophy must be-ware of wishing to be edifying.

Still less must this kind of contentment, which holds science in contempt, take upon itself to claim that raving obscurantism of this sort is something high-er than science. Moreover, when this unrefl ective emotional knowledge makes a pretence of having immersed its own very self in the depths of the absolute Being, and of philosophizing in all holiness and truth, it hides from itself the fact that in-stead of devotion to God, it rather, by this contempt for all measurable precision and defi niteness, simply attests in its own case the fortuitous character of its con-tent, and in the other endows God with its own caprice. When such minds com-mit themselves to the unrestrained ferment of sheer emotion, they think that, by putting a veil over self-consciousness, and surrendering all understanding, they are thus Gods beloved ones to whom He gives His wisdom in sleep. Th is is the reason, too, that in point of fact, what they do conceive and bring forth in sleep is dreams.

For the rest it is not diffi cult to see that our epoch is a birth-time, and a period of transition. Th e spirit of man has broken with the old order of things hitherto prevailing, and with the old ways of thinking, and is in the mind to let them all sink into the depths of the past and to set about its own transformation. It is in-deed never at rest, but carried along the stream of progress ever onward. But it is here as in the case of the birth of a child; aft er a long period of nutrition in silence, the continuity of the gradual growth in size, of quantitative change, is suddenly cut short by the fi rst breath drawnthere is a break in the process, a qualitative change and the child is born. In like manner, the spirit of the time, growing slowly and quietly ripe for the new form it is to assume, disintegrates one fragment af-ter another of the structure of its previous world. Th at it is tottering to its fall is indicated only by symptoms here and there. Frivolity and again ennui, which are spreading in the established order of things, the undefi ned foreboding of some-

G. W. F. Hegel28

thing unknownall these betoken that there is something else approaching. Th is gradual crumbling to pieces, which did not alter the general look and aspect of the whole, is interrupted by the sunrise, which, in a fl ash and at a single stroke, brings to view the form and structure of the new world.

But this new world is perfectly realized just as little as the new-born child; and it is essential to bear this in mind. It comes on the stage to begin with in its imme-diacy, in its bare generality. A building is not fi nished when its foundation is laid; and just as little, is the attainment of a general notion of a whole the whole itself. When we want to see an oak with all its vigour of trunk, its spreading branches, and mass of foliage, we are not satisfi ed to be shown an acorn instead. In the same way science, the crowning glory of a spiritual world, is not found complete in its initial stages. Th e beginning of the new spirit is the outcome of a widespread revo-lution in manifold forms of spiritual culture; it is the reward which comes aft er a chequered and devious course of development, and aft er much struggle and eff ort. It is a whole which, aft er running its course and laying bare all its content, returns again to itself; it is the resultant abstract notion of the whole. But the actual reali-zation of this abstract whole is only found when those previous shapes and forms, which are now reduced to ideal moments of the whole, are developed anew again, but developed and shaped within this new medium, and with the meaning they have thereby acquired.

THE PRINCIPLE IS NOT THE COMPLETION; AGAINST FORMALISM

While the new world makes its fi rst appearance merely in general outline, mere-ly as a whole lying concealed and hidden within a bare abstraction, the wealth of the bygone life, on the other hand, is still consciously present in recollection. Consciousness misses in the new form the detailed expanse of content; but still more the developed expression of form by which distinctions are defi nitely deter-mined and arranged in their precise relations. Only what is perfectly determinate in form is at the same time exoteric, comprehensible, and capable of being learned and possessed by everybody. Intelligibility is the form in which science is off ered to everyone, and is the open road to it made plain for all. To reach rational knowl-edge by our intelligence is the just demand of the mind which comes to science. For intelligence, understanding (Verstand), is thinking, pure activity of the self in general; and what is intelligible (Verstndige) is something from the fi rst familiar and common to the scientifi c and unscientifi c mind alike, enabling the unscien-tifi c mind to enter the domain of science.

Hence everything appears brought within the compass of the Absolute Idea, which seems thus to be recognized in everything, and to have succeeded in be-coming a system in extenso of scientifi c knowledge. But if we look more closely at this expanded system we fi nd that it has not been reached by one and the same principle taking shape in diverse ways; it is the shapeless repetition of one and the

Phenomenology of Spirit 29

same idea, which is applied in an external fashion to diff erent material, the wea-risome reiteration of it keeping up the semblance of diversity. Th e Idea, which by itself is no doubt the truth, really never gets any farther than just where it began, as long as the development of it consists in nothing else than such a repetition of the same formula. If the knowing subject carries round everywhere the one in-ert abstract form, taking up in external fashion whatever material comes his way, and dipping it into this element, then this comes about as near to fulfi lling what is wantedviz. a self-origination of the wealth of detail, and a self-determining distinction of shapes and forms-as any chance fancies about the content in ques-tion. It is rather a monochrome formalism, which only arrives at distinction in the matter it has to deal with, because this is already prepared and well known.

Th is monotonousness and abstract universality are maintained to be the Ab-solute. Th is formalism insists that to be dissatisfi ed therewith argues an incapac-ity to grasp the standpoint of the Absolute, and keep a fi rm hold on it. If it was once the case that the bare possibility of thinking of something in some other fashion was suffi cient to refute a given idea, and the naked possibility, the bare general thought, possessed and passed for the entire substantive value of actual knowledge; similarly we fi nd here all the value ascribed to the general idea in this bare form without concrete realization; and we see here, too, the style and meth-od of speculative contemplation identifi ed with dissipating and resolving what is determinate and distinct, or rather with hurling it down, without more ado and without any justifi cation, into the abyss of vacuity. To consider any specifi c fact as it is in the Absolute, consists here in nothing else than saying about it that, while it is now doubtless spoken of as something specifi c, yet in the Absolute, in the abstract identity A = A, there is no such thing at all, for everything is there all one. To pit this single assertion, that in the Absolute all is one, against the or-ganized whole of determinate and complete knowledge, or of knowledge which at least aims at and demands complete developmentto give out its Absolute as the night in which, as we say, all cows are blackthat is the very navet of emp-tiness of knowledge.

Th e formalism which has been deprecated and despised by recent philosophy, and which has arisen once more in philosophy itself, will not disappear from sci-ence, even though its inadequacy is known and felt, till the knowledge of absolute reality has become quite clear as to what its own true nature consists in. Having in mind that the general idea of what is to be done, if it precedes the attempt to carry it out, facilitates the comprehension of this process, it is worthwhile to indicate here some rough idea of it, with the hope at the same time that this will give us the opportunity to set aside certain forms whose habitual presence is a hindrance in the way of speculative knowledge.

THE ABSOLUTE IS SUBJECT, AND WHAT THIS IS

In my viewa view which the developed exposition of the system itself can alone justifyeverything depends on grasping and expressing the ultimate truth not as

G. W. F. Hegel30

Substance but as Subject as well. At the same time we must note that concrete sub-stantiality implicates and involves the universal or the immediacy of knowledge it-self, as well as that immediacy which is being, or immediacy qua object for knowl-edge. If the generation which heard God spoken of as the One Substance was shocked and revolted by such a characterization of his nature, the reason lay part-ly in the instinctive feeling that in such a conception self-consciousness was sim-ply submerged, and not preserved. But partly, again, the opposite position, which maintains thinking to be merely subjective thinking, abstract universality as such, is exactly the same bare uniformity, is undiff erentiated, unmoved substantiality. And even if, in the third place, thought combines with itself the being of sub-stance, and conceives immediacy or intuition (Anschauung) as thinking, it is still a question whether this intellectual intuition does not fall back into that inert, ab-stract simplicity, and exhibit and expound reality itself in an unreal manner.

Th e living substance, further, is that being which is truly subject, or, what is the same thing, is truly realized and actual (wirklich) solely in the process of pos-iting itself, or in mediating with its own self its transitions from one state or po-sition to the opposite. As subject it is pure and simple negativity, and just on that account a process of splitting up what is simple and undiff erentiated, a process of duplicating and setting factors in opposition, which [process] in turn is the nega-tion of this indiff erent diversity and of the opposition of factors it entails. True reality is merely this process of reinstating self-identity, of refl ecting into its own self in and from its other, and is not an original and primal unity as such, not an immediate unity as such. It is the process of its own becoming, the circle which presupposes its end as its purpose, and has its end for its beginning; it becomes concrete and actual only by being carried out, and by the end it involves.

Th e life of God and divine intelligence, then, can, if we like, be spoken of as love disporting with itself; but this idea falls into edifi cation, and even sinks into insipidity, if it lacks the seriousness, the suff ering, the patience, and the labour of the negative. Per se the divine life is no doubt undisturbed identity and oneness with itself, which fi nds no serious obstacle in otherness and estrangement, and none in the surmounting of this estrangement. But this per se is abstract gener-ality, where we abstract from its real nature, which consists in its being objective to itself, conscious of itself on its own account ( fr sich zu sein); and where con-sequently we neglect altogether the self-movement which is the formal charac-ter of its activity. If the form is declared to correspond to the essence, it is just for that reason a misunderstanding to suppose that knowledge can be content with the per se, the essence, but can do without the form, that the absolute principle, or absolute intuition, makes the carrying out of the former, or the development of the latter, needless. Precisely because the form is as necessary to the essence as the essence to itself, absolute